The World's Fair Goes to Walt Disney World

by Brian Martsolf, ALL EARS® Guest Columnist

Feature Article

This article appeared in the
September 28, 2004, Issue #262 of ALL EARS®
(ISSN: 1533-0753)

In 1964, Disney's Sunday night television program, The Wonderful
World of Color, ran an episode called "Disneyland Goes to the
World's Fair." This episode, according to Bill Cotter's book
"The Wonderful World of Disney Television," began with an
animated look at some past fairs, and then went on to look at
some of Disney's exhibits under construction.

Some have said that part of Walt's reason for participating in
the New York World's Fair of 1964-65 was to prove that the
cosmopolitan big city folks who made up so much of the
population back East had the same kind of taste for Disney's
theme park attractions that folks out West had. At this point in
time he was already considering building an "East Coast
Disneyland."

Even though he might have wanted the information for potential
financial backing for the project, I doubt Walt felt much need
to prove his theory about folks on the East Coast. I believe the
biggest draw to his participation in the Fair was the way the
attractions would test and provide the technologies he wanted to
use in future theme park endeavors. This pushing forward of ride
technologies is particularly appropriate when you consider that
the theme of that World's Fair was "The World of Tomorrow." You
can see evidence of Walt's motivation in the fact that the
attractions built for the Fair, in part or whole, were
transplanted to Disneyland after the completion of the Fair.

Disney produced four shows for the 1964-65 World's Fair: Great
Moments with Mr. Lincoln (built for the State of Illinois
Pavilion), Progressland (built for GE), The Magic Skyway (for
the Ford Pavilion), and It's a Small World (sponsored by the
Pepsi Cola Company, with the proceeds to benefit UNICEF). The
main shows from Pepsi's, GE's and Illinois's attractions were
all transplanted more or less whole, back to Disneyland, though
each of these pavilions had lesser elements that did not make
the trip to California.

Today we take for granted realistic-looking animatronic figures
in Disney attractions, like the Wicked Witch in the Great Movie
Ride, the figures in the Pirates of the Caribbean, the
presidents of the United States in the Hall of Presidents, and
Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin in the American Adventure.
Looking back, we can see that the effects of the World's Fair
attractions extended far beyond just those that returned to
Disneyland, and even had an effect on the Walt Disney World that
we know today. Mr. Lincoln is probably the best example of how
far the technology and art form of Audio-Animatronics advanced
in the very brief period between the opening of the Enchanted
Tiki Room (in 1963) and the World's Fair.

The Ford Pavilion did not see many specific elements make it
back to Disneyland other than some Audio-Animatronic dinosaurs
that were used in a new diorama called the Primeval World. But
the important contribution the Ford Pavilion had on Disney's
attractions was found in the seeds of new ride systems -- the
Peoplemover and the Omnimover systems. You see, the Magic Skyway
featured Ford automobiles guided down a track without the aid of
a driver, making this attraction the forefather of the Omnimover
and Peoplemover systems. These unique modes of transportation
have been used in many attractions, like the Haunted Mansion,
World of Motion, Horizons, and even Spaceship Earth! But even
those dinosaurs from the World's Fair have an echo at Walt
Disney World today. If you ever ride the Disneyland Railroad and
see the Primeval World diorama, there's a very familiar pose
between two of the dinosaurs, a Tyrannosaurus Rex locked in
battle with a Stegosaurus. That same pose can be seen in a
battle between an Allosaurus and a Stegosaurus in Ellen's Energy
Adventure at Epcot.

The Small World attraction is also an example of an attraction
that contributed a whole new ride system to Disney's repertoire
of theme park technologies. In fact, the Pirates of the
Caribbean attraction had already been planned on a much smaller
scale at Disneyland. The area where the attraction is now had
been dug up and structural steel had been put in place, but with
so much work being done on the Fair it had ground to a halt.
After seeing what new ride systems were doing for him at the
Fair, Walt eventually had the built structure removed and a
whole new ride experience designed.

Walt Disney World benefited from more than just the new ride
system developed for It's a Small World. It also received the
more advanced Audio-Animatronic figures developed for the
Carousel of Progress (from the Progressland Pavilion), and Great
Moments with Mr. Lincoln. As you can see, many of the
attractions we enjoy at Walt Disney World owe a lot to that
World's Fair.

Even Splash Mountain, in a roundabout way, owes its development
to the 1964-65 World's Fair. You could also say it owes a debt
to the development of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World,
and the United States celebration of the Bicentennial in 1976.
As I mentioned earlier, the attractions from the World's Fair
were transplanted to Disneyland upon the completion of the Fair.
This included GE's Carousel of Progress, which, with its theme
song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" intact, was added
to Disneyland's "New Tomorrowland" expansion of 1967. But by
1973, General Electric wanted to add their presence to Disney's
new Florida theme park and wanted to update the attraction as
well. The Carousel's Audio-Animatronic occupant moved to
Florida, and got a new theme song to reflect GE's emphasis on
the here and now -- "Now Is the Time." This left an empty
Carousel theater in California at the time the United States
Bicentennial Celebration was approaching, and Disneyland was
looking for ways to celebrate. One of the ways they came up with
was a show that explored the history of America's music using
that same Carousel theater. The show was called America Sings,
and it featured a large Audio-Animatronic cast of geese,
weasels, possums, and even vultures. It was popular enough that
it ran for many years even after the Bicentennial Celebration
was over, but eventually in 1988 it closed. However, the
Audio-Animatronic critters were not to stay idle long -- in
fact, as early as 1983, Tony Baxter, the well-known Disney
Imagineer, came up with a new plan for the use of these
characters (while stuck in traffic no less). That idea resulted
in Splash Mountain, which opened just slightly more than two
years after America Sings had made its final revolution on the
Carousel turntable.

Epcot itself has often been referred to as a permanent world's
fair. With its pavilions sponsored by countries and companies
the parallel is not hard to see. And with perhaps some of the
same motivations driving the sponsors (increased tourism for the
countries that participate, and a chance for companies to show
off where their technologies can take us, or to simply help the
customer think of them in a positive context) that must be much
of the reason for sponsorship in both world's fairs and Epcot.

For yet another connection between Walt Disney World and the
1964 World's Fair, take a look at the names on the ferries that
carry people from the Ticket and Transportation Center to the
Magic Kingdom. According to Captain Matt from WDW Watercraft, in
honor of the upcoming 30th anniversary of the WDW resort in
1999, these ferries were renamed after some of the people
important in the design of the parks and in the building of Walt
Disney World -- Richard F. Irvine, Admiral Joe Fowler, and
General Joe Potter. Admiral Fowler and Richard Irvine had both
been with Walt many years already when Walt Disney World was
built, but General Joe Potter was hired away from the New York
World's Fair as it was wrapping up. He, along with Admiral
Fowler and Mr. Irvine, were leaders in the planning and
construction of WDW. According to D. M. Miller in his book,
"What Would Walt Do?": "After Joe Fowler moved to the site, it
was General Potter who intercepted the media, the politicians,
everybody who could distract the Admiral from his duties in
getting the project built. As far as the public was concerned he
was much better known than Admiral Fowler was. It looked to the
outside world like the General was in charge of everything. He
and the Admiral worked like hand and glove and pulled it off
very well." With the addition of him to the project you can turn
around the title of that Wonderful World of Color episode I
mentioned earlier and declare "The World's Fair Goes to Walt
Disney World."

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Brian Martsolf is a lifelong Disney theme park fan whose first
visit to Walt Disney World was in 1996. He lives in Charlotte,
NC, with his wife, Carlene, and works at a Tyco Plastics
manufacturing facility. He also has his own Disney website,
http://www.bigbrian-nc.com, which features trip reports
(with lots of photos), a section on the history of Walt Disney
World illustrated with its postcards, and articles on the Disney
Internet community and Disney theme park souvenirs.

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Editor's Note: This story/information was accurate when it was published. Please be sure to
confirm all current rates, information and other details before planning your trip.